Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for limiting the execution of background management operations in a drive array.
Description of Related Art
Storage systems can be embodied as a redundant array of independent disks (RAID′) that are controlled by a RAID controller. RAID controllers protect data by adding parity protection over a group of independent storage devices. Parity calculations require the RAID controller to use a number of reads and writes that are in some cases dependent on one another to keep the drive group coherent. The parity calculations on a RAID array require data from multiple sources and writes will have to wait for a series of reads and these parity calculations to complete. Individual devices can interpret the pause in activity as an opportunity to perform background tasks such as data scrubbing or consistency checking, which can hurt write performance on the storage array.